Overview

Drawing from recently declassified top-secret material, as well as revelatory eyewitness accounts, Secret Service records, and Jacqueline Kennedy's personal letters, bestselling biographer Barbara Leaming answers the question: what was it like to be Mrs. John F. Kennedy during the dramatic thousand days of the Kennedy presidency? Brilliantly researched, Leaming's poignant and powerful chronicle illuminates the tumultuous day-to-day life of a woman who entered the White House at age thirty-one, seven years into a ...

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Overview

Drawing from recently declassified top-secret material, as well as revelatory eyewitness accounts, Secret Service records, and Jacqueline Kennedy's personal letters, bestselling biographer Barbara Leaming answers the question: what was it like to be Mrs. John F. Kennedy during the dramatic thousand days of the Kennedy presidency? Brilliantly researched, Leaming's poignant and powerful chronicle illuminates the tumultuous day-to-day life of a woman who entered the White House at age thirty-one, seven years into a complex and troubled marriage, and left at thirty-four after her husband's assassination. Revealing the full story of the interplay of sex and politics in Washington, Mrs. Kennedy will indelibly challenge our vision of this fascinating woman, and bring a new perspective to her crucial role in the Kennedy presidency.

Editorial Reviews

From Barnes & Noble

When Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy arrived at the White House, she was only 31, and, according to biographer Barbara Leaming, a very unhappy wife. Leaming charts the history of the presidential couple's uneven and sometimes tumultuous marriage until its tragic end. Utilizing eyewitness testimony and recently declassified top-secret documents, she tracks Mrs. Kennedy's gutsy attempts to maintain her marriage and her happy public face. Among the most fascinating features this sympathetic account is the author's delineation of this first lady's role in international diplomacy.

From the Publisher

Deirdre Donahue USA Today Leaming paints a moving portrait of Jackie as she tried valiantly to make her marriage work and find a place for herself and her gifts.

Kirkus Reviews (starred) Likely to become the definitive biography of the Kennedy marriage.

Kirkus Reviews

"The famously private Mrs. kennedy has met her match and is herein revealed-along with her husband and his administration-respectfully, but thoroughly, by an author possessed.

With admirable obsession, biographer Leaming (Marilyn Monroe, 1998, etc.) has plumbed the vaults of the many official libraries (JFK's, LBJ's, Oxford's Bodleian) and consulted with Secret Service personnel, Kennedy friends, and White House log books to create a convincing day-by-day chronicle of the Kennedy marriage and presidency. Armed with a remarkable level of detail and turning an eye toward psychological anaylsis, the author briefly explores her subject's childhood, and then dives into the Kennedy's life together. In Leaming's view, the personal and political spheres of the Kennedys are inseparable. Thus, the Bay of Pigs fiasco is explained as a son attempting to compensate for his ambassador father's perceived weakness when, decades before, the elder Kennedy coundeled conciliation in the face of Hitler. The U.S. involvement in Vietnam is traced back to Jack's inability to focus on foreign affairs after the death of his newborn son. Meanwhile, Jackie's determination to be a good wife is what spurred her to enter the world's stage. Leaming paints a portrait of a political creature whose every action was premeditated, from her whispery voice designed to project a non-threatening femininity, to her decision to quit Washington every weekend in order to allow Jack to conduct his extramarital affairs out of her sight. Full of such interesting theories, Leaming is particularly convincing when arguing that Jackie was to Jack nothing so much as the perfect replacement for his beloved sister, Kick, who died very young. The standard tasty details of dress, design, and glittering social circle are not neglected; indeed, Jackie's sense of style writ large is seen as her particular genius, equally useful for charming world leaders and the crowd back home.

Admirably detailed, stunningly successful, and likely to become the definitive biography of the Kennedy marriage, with all the intimacy and international scope implied."

From The Critics

While Pottker's Janet & Jackie is a sort of hoopskirt in a high wind—loose, inappropriate and uncontrollable—Leaming's Mrs. Kennedy, by comparison, is a marvel of clarity, intelligence, sympathy and sound research. We see how a young woman in her twenties, at first dreading the hoopla of high office and high visibility, gathered her courage and prepared meticulously to charm such leaders as Jawaharlal Nehru, Charles de Gaulle and Nikita Khrushchev, greatly enhancing her husband's popularity and effectiveness. Regarding a state dinner with de Gaulle at which Jackie dismissed the official translator and served as a whispery, sexy intermediary between the two presidents, Leaming writes, "She appeared to enjoy the political game as never before, and the meaning she had once sought in her own life as an antidote to the emptiness and insularity of her mother's existence seemed attainable at last."

Jackie's effort to find a way of living that preserved her dignity and sense of worth despite her husband's chronic infidelity—and her struggle to figure out what was required of her, and brilliantly, to fulfill that expectation—makes her a fascinating subject. Jackie's story is greatly enhanced by Leaming's generosity of spirit and imagination. She observes, for example, that Jackie read and delighted in accounts of French court scandals but must have been dismayed by the inescapable parallels that could be drawn.

For Jackie, the White House, which she had redecorated to national acclaim, represented not simply public triumph but private shame. In the past, she had remained at home while her husband pursued casual sex elsewhere. "Now," Leamingobserves, "in order to guard against being confronted with things she preferred to avoid, she was going to have to take active steps to make it possible for him to cheat." At virtually the same moment that she left the White House for weekends in the country, trusted cronies were ferrying in young women with whom the president had sexual relations. Mary Meyer, a louche, ambitious woman in her forties who prided herself on her recklessness and planned to introduce the president to LSD, was a frequent partner.

Leaming, who thinks of the White House years as a period when JFK was engaged in "a personal struggle against unimaginable odds for a moral compass," also documents the president's habitual use of methamphetamines provided by Dr. Max Jacobson, whose patients called him Dr. Feel Good. Her aim is not simply to dredge up scandal but to show the factors that could impair judgment at crucial junctures.

Throughout this volume, Leaming's concern is to match private experience with public events, including the Cuban Missile Crisis and the disastrous diplomatic summit with Khrushchev in Vienna. These were moments when the president floundered, at the mercy of events and of advisers with their own agendas. But if our view of him is diminished by Leaming's account, respect for Jackie can only be increased. As when she disregarded the advice of the Secret Service, who feared another assassination attempt, and walked behind her fallen husband's cortege, Jackie did what the American public most loved her for. She found a brave and appropriate gesture to convey the best in her own nature. Leaming is far too wise to indulge in hero worship, but she is equally too wise to overlook or diminish what is heroic in her subject. For that, and a great deal else, readers must be grateful.
—Penelope Mesic

Publishers Weekly

Asserting that Jacqueline Kennedy's role in shaping her husband's presidency has been under-examined, Leaming (Katharine Hepburn) offers a corrective in this intimate look at a very private woman. Initially inclined to keep herself as much in the background as possible, says Leaming, Jacqueline Kennedy became an increasingly visible and vocal first lady as she realized how effective she could be as an image maker. It's in this capacity that Leaming convincingly depicts her as being instrumental in shaping the course of her husband's administration: charming, intuitive and socially savvy, she was clearly adept at recognizing precisely how to win over any given individual or audience, and to convince them to see her husband in a favorable light. While many world leaders, for example, were initially inclined to view John F. Kennedy as a playboy and an intellectual lightweight, Jackie skillfully massaged their perceptions until they began to take him more seriously and consequently to be much more responsive to his foreign policy agenda. But even as she worked hard on his behalf, Jack continually betrayed her with his legendary infidelities; the impact of this on Jackie's psyche is also a major theme here. Indeed, this is as much a psychological biography as a political one, and Leaming explores Jackie's complex and often painful inner life with subtlety and compassion. Unabashedly sympathetic toward her protagonist, Leaming provides a fascinating glimpse into the psychodynamics of one of the 20th century's most famous marriages, and her assertion that Jackie Kennedy deserves more credit than she's typically gotten for her husband's successes is persuasive. 32 pages b&w photos not seen by PW.(Nov.) Forecast: Leaming's bio of Katharine Hepburn was a bestseller, and one can predict generous sales for this title, which Leaming will promote in New York, Boston and Washington, D.C., including an appearance on the Today show. Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.

Library Journal

Despite the welter of material on Jacqueline Kennedy, biographer Leaming has indeed produced an original and compelling portrait of Jackie as first lady. Leaming has plumbed primary sources heretofore unused (such as the letters of Harold Macmillan) and conducted interviews with sometime friends and associates, perhaps more willing to talk now that Jackie has died. Leaming makes a persuasive case for Jackie's substantive contribution as first lady in the role of diplomat. Jackie did the research and softened up visiting leaders, who then met the president already impressed with his administration. Leaming also explains Jackie's highly criticized absences from the White House: she was fleeing her husband's flagrant womanizing. Leaming's extensive documentation of his shameless conduct and his cruelty to his wife is breathtaking. (Her theories about why they married and why Jackie stood for such treatment are less dispositive.) The publisher plans a national publicity campaign. Public libraries should stock up, but they won't be able to meet the certain demand no matter how many copies they own. Cynthia Harrison, George Washington Univ., Washington, DC Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.

Kirkus Reviews

The famously private Mrs. Kennedy has met her match and is herein revealed-along with her husband and his administration-respectfully but thoroughly, by an author possessed. With admirable obsession, biographer Leaming (Marilyn Monroe, 1998, etc.) has plumbed the vaults of the many official libraries (JFK's, LBJ's, Oxford's Bodleian) and consulted with Secret Service personnel, Kennedy friends, and White House log books to create a convincing day-by-day chronicle of the Kennedy marriage and presidency. Armed with a remarkable level of detail and turning an eye toward psychological analysis, the author briefly explores her subject's childhood, and then dives into the Kennedys' life together. In Leaming's view, the personal and political spheres of the Kennedys are inseparable. Thus, the Bay of Pigs fiasco is explained as a son attempting to compensate for his ambassador father's perceived weakness when, decades before, the elder Kennedy counseled conciliation in the face of Hitler.The US involvement in Vietnam is traced back to Jack's inability to focus on foreign affairs after the death of his newborn son. Meanwhile, Jackie's determination to be a good wife is what spurred her to enter the world's stage. Leaming paints a portrait of a political creature whose every action was premeditated, from her whispery voice designed to project a non-threatening femininity, to her decision to quit Washington every weekend in order to allow Jack to conduct his extramarital affairs out of her sight. Full of such interesting theories, Leaming is particularly convincing when arguing that Jackie was to Jack nothing so much as the perfect replacement for his beloved sister, Kick, who died very young. Thestandard tasty details of dress, design, and glittering social circle are not neglected; indeed, Jackie's sense of style writ large is seen as her particular genius, equally useful for charming world leaders and the crowd back home. Admirably detailed, stunningly successful, and likely to become the definitive biography of the Kennedy marriage, with all the intimacy and international scope implied. Book-of-the-Month Club/Literary Guild/Doubleday Book Club/History Book Club/Quality Paperback Book Club alternate selection

Related Subjects

Meet the Author

Barbara Leaming is the author of the critically acclaimed Orson Welles and the New York Times bestseller Katharine Hepburn. Her articles have appeared in Vanity Fair and The New York Times Magazine. She lives in Connecticut.

Read an Excerpt

Author's Note

Had it not been for the fact that Jacqueline Kennedy was married to the President of the United States, it is unlikely that a single book about her would have been written. And yet, in the dozens of books about her, specific details of that presidency have been largely excluded. Even more striking, and of greater consequence, is the fact that the histories of John F. Kennedy's presidency are comparably flawed, missing as they do the story of Jacqueline Kennedy and her crucial role. In an effort to fill the gap, I have tried to tell her story in those years with as much attention to the presidency as to the events of her private life. The role of Jacqueline Kennedy is probably less understood than any other part of the Kennedy presidency; equally, her personal story cannot be grasped without seeing it in the context of the unfolding events of one of the twentieth century's most dramatic presidencies. Her life was changed by historical events in ways she had never anticipated. She, in turn, influenced certain of those events in ways that until now have remained largely unexamined.

The chronicle of any presidency is incomplete without a consideration of the president's private life. That is even more true in the case of John F. Kennedy, because his private life repeatedly put his presidency at risk. Oddly, Kennedy's detractors — those seeking to portray his so-called dark side — have largely excluded Jackie from their versions of events, every bit as much as his apologists have. I would argue that one can come to terms neither with Kennedy's darker aspects nor with his fundamental decency — nor, ultimately, with what was perhaps his most stunning unfinished achievement, his own personal struggle against unimaginable odds for a moral compass — without being intimately familiar with the unusual nature of his life with her.

What follows is Jacqueline Kennedy's story in the White House years told fully for the first time in the larger and inseparable context of the presidency. It is also, in important ways, the story of the Kennedy presidency, with a tremendous missing piece filled in. To view the presidency afresh, rather than start with published memoirs and established histories, I have reconstructed the story from scratch, using the vast documentation produced during the Kennedy administration: letters, memos, transcripts, reports, diaries, and other primary sources. Using Secret Service reports of presidential movements, appointment books, gate logs, and other records, I have tracked the President and First Lady, as well as their intimates and associates, on a day-by-day, often minute-by-minute basis. With the aid of transcripts and minutes of meetings, I listened to what was actually said, by Kennedy himself and by key participants, during the many tumultuous events that made this presidency such an exciting one. I followed the President afterward, whether upstairs to the family quarters or to the Kennedys' weekend retreat in the country, to see him unwind with his wife and close friends. I considered what certain of those friends had to say about the Kennedys, whether in letters or diaries of the period, or in interviews. And I listened carefully to Jackie's own voice, in letters and other documents.

No experience can have been more valuable to me than the opportunity to study Jackie's extraordinarily moving, uncharacteristically frank correspondence with Harold Macmillan, written after her husband's death. As I encountered the passionate, emotionally turbulent, unguarded voice in those letters, and made sense of the allusions, both hers and Macmillan's, to certain defining events in the presidency, I was struck by how little has ever really been known about Jacqueline Kennedy or her intimate life with Jack in the White House years. In telling that story, it is my hope that, as I did, the reader will come to a better and more sympathetic understanding of two flawed but good and remarkable people, both of whom, each in his or her own way, came to exemplify the virtue both valued most: courage.

Introduction

Author's Note

Had it not been for the fact that Jacqueline Kennedy was married to the President of the United States, it is unlikely that a single book about her would have been written. And yet, in the dozens of books about her, specific details of that presidency have been largely excluded. Even more striking, and of greater consequence, is the fact that the histories of John F. Kennedy's presidency are comparably flawed, missing as they do the story of Jacqueline Kennedy and her crucial role. In an effort to fill the gap, I have tried to tell her story in those years with as much attention to the presidency as to the events of her private life. The role of Jacqueline Kennedy is probably less understood than any other part of the Kennedy presidency; equally, her personal story cannot be grasped without seeing it in the context of the unfolding events of one of the twentieth century's most dramatic presidencies. Her life was changed by historical events in ways she had never anticipated. She, in turn, influenced certain of those events in ways that until now have remained largely unexamined.

The chronicle of any presidency is incomplete without a consideration of the president's private life. That is even more true in the case of John F. Kennedy, because his private life repeatedly put his presidency at risk. Oddly, Kennedy's detractors -- those seeking to portray his so-called dark side -- have largely excluded Jackie from their versions of events, every bit as much as his apologists have. I would argue that one can come to terms neither with Kennedy's darker aspects nor with his fundamental decency -- nor, ultimately, with what was perhaps his most stunning unfinished achievement, his own personal struggle against unimaginable odds for a moral compass -- without being intimately familiar with the unusual nature of his life with her.

What follows is Jacqueline Kennedy's story in the White House years told fully for the first time in the larger and inseparable context of the presidency. It is also, in important ways, the story of the Kennedy presidency, with a tremendous missing piece filled in. To view the presidency afresh, rather than start with published memoirs and established histories, I have reconstructed the story from scratch, using the vast documentation produced during the Kennedy administration: letters, memos, transcripts, reports, diaries, and other primary sources. Using Secret Service reports of presidential movements, appointment books, gate logs, and other records, I have tracked the President and First Lady, as well as their intimates and associates, on a day-by-day, often minute-by-minute basis. With the aid of transcripts and minutes of meetings, I listened to what was actually said, by Kennedy himself and by key participants, during the many tumultuous events that made this presidency such an exciting one. I followed the President afterward, whether upstairs to the family quarters or to the Kennedys' weekend retreat in the country, to see him unwind with his wife and close friends. I considered what certain of those friends had to say about the Kennedys, whether in letters or diaries of the period, or in interviews. And I listened carefully to Jackie's own voice, in letters and other documents.

No experience can have been more valuable to me than the opportunity to study Jackie's extraordinarily moving, uncharacteristically frank correspondence with Harold Macmillan, written after her husband's death. As I encountered the passionate, emotionally turbulent, unguarded voice in those letters, and made sense of the allusions, both hers and Macmillan's, to certain defining events in the presidency, I was struck by how little has ever really been known about Jacqueline Kennedy or her intimate life with Jack in the White House years. In telling that story, it is my hope that, as I did, the reader will come to a better and more sympathetic understanding of two flawed but good and remarkable people, both of whom, each in his or her own way, came to exemplify the virtue both valued most: courage.

Interviews & Essays

Exclusive Author Essay
On November 25, 1963, in Washington, D.C., 34-year-old Jacqueline Kennedy walked behind her husband's coffin at the head of a procession that included the new president, Lyndon Johnson, French president Charles de Gaulle, the Soviet emissary, Anastas Mikoyan, and leaders and representatives of 92 nations.

Three days previously in Dallas, Texas, Jacqueline Kennedy had been inches from death, as a sniper's bullet shattered her husband's head while she fought to pull him down to safety after an earlier gunshot. Still, back in Washington, she had declared that, at her husband's funeral, she would follow his coffin on foot through the wide streets, which suddenly seemed so full of menace. She had insisted that she must "walk behind Jack," despite the desperate pleas of U.S. government officials that her plan was too dangerous. Warned that further violence might erupt, she made it clear that she would not permit terror to rule. In the hours that led up to the procession, there were numerous assassination threats on the world leaders assembled in Washington. Nonetheless, Johnson, de Gaulle, and others, following her example, insisted that they wanted to "walk with Mrs. Kennedy." That morning she, whose husband admired courage above all virtues, symbolized courage to a shaken and frightened world.

To anyone who saw Jacqueline Kennedy march behind President Kennedy's coffin, it would have been hard to imagine that, three years before, she had arrived at the White House plagued by insecurity, defeated by a difficult marriage, and determined as far as possible to play no active role in the presidency. How had this young woman who, only a thousand days prior to the assassination, had been filled with trepidation that she was inadequate to her responsibilities, become the emblematic figure who offered the American people a much-needed image of strength in the face of violence, of dignity and stability in the face of chaos? How did the shy, self-doubting 31-year-old of Inauguration Day become the powerful presence who comforted and inspired a nation in its time of tragedy? That is the story I have tried to tell in Mrs. Kennedy: The Missing History of the Kennedy Years. Using letters, diaries, and a wide range of other primary documentation, as well as interviews with Kennedy friends and associates, I have reconstructed Jacqueline Kennedy's day-by-day life, both public and private, as First Lady. Her story is a shocking, often-painful journey, one I hope readers will find as fascinating and deeply moving as I did. (Barbara Leaming)

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Customer Reviews

Anonymous

Posted March 22, 2002

A true portrait of Mrs. Kennedy

This is a truly engaging and enlighting portrait of Jackie Kennedy, and one that has not been explored in much depth before this book. Her role as first lady and all she accomplished is explained in great detail, and one can't help but admire her more than ever. As one old enough to remember the scorn heaped on Mrs. Kennedy when she married Onassis, this book gives much background and a deeper understanding why she chose Onassis as her second husband. Her humanness as well as her amazing talents and accomplishments come to light in this book, one of the best I have ever read on Jackie Kennedy. I highly recommend it.

4 out of 4 people found this review helpful.

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Anonymous

Posted May 31, 2002

Misleading Title

This book does not deal with Mrs. Kennedy as one would want to believe. The author is focused on Sex and Drugs. Her interest in President Kennedy sexual affairs and the need for drugs to keep going is not backed up with suporting evidence. She fails to really talk about or discuss Mrs. Kennedy. I feel this author is using the Kennedy name in order to make a profit and that is all.

3 out of 8 people found this review helpful.

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Anonymous

Posted April 24, 2002

A romantic historical novel

The book reveals the courage of a remarkable women. There is no doubt that she loved her husband very much despite his flaws. She is indeed an American queen.It also proves that Mrs Kennedy had brains as well as beauty. Besides, we can understand the political and personal transformation JFK underwent during his presidency.

2 out of 3 people found this review helpful.

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Anonymous

Posted November 3, 2001

What a wonderful book!

This story is the best book that I have read on Jackie in a long time! She goes into depth about how much JFK's womanizing hurt her, not only that, but how her mothers verbal abuse affected her for years. It also shows the deep love that JFK felt for her, yet he was in conflict with that love and what he was taught to do by his father. It also goes into depth about how Jack sought a replacement for his beloved sister Kathleen Kennedy, and he sought that in Jackie. I definitely reccommend this wonderful book! Clarissa

2 out of 2 people found this review helpful.

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Anonymous

Posted November 12, 2001

The Ultimate Mystery Story

Outstanding research about the Kennedy marriage played out simultaneously with the American presidency. Mrs. Leaming's frank information about the Kennedy marriage, politics,sex,drugs,children,and Mary Meyers was unsettling, sad, and sometimes nice. It is a testimoney to the grit of Jackie Kennedy. The great mystery would be: if JFK had lived, would the marriage have survived the eventual presidential sex outting by the press.

2 out of 2 people found this review helpful.

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Anonymous

Posted February 5, 2012

Gave it 3 stars...

A very detailed book, however there seemed to be more detail about JFK's presidency and what HE was dealing with than Mrs. Kennedy. I was okay with that - since the subject interests me - however I wish there would have been more on Jackie and what she was going through all the way up to her marriage to Onassis... After all, she was "Mrs. Kennedy" until she remarried. The ending seemed a bit abrupt. Other than that, a worthwhile read.

1 out of 1 people found this review helpful.

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Anonymous

Posted December 23, 2004

A Disgrace

If you thought that 'The Dark Side of Camelot' and 'A Question of Judgment' were one-sided diatribes against JFK, you ain't read nothing yet. The President Kennedy that emerges from these pages is sex obsessed, amoral and incompetent. Unfit to hold high office, shameless and cruel in his treatment of Jackie - a saint who bears every burden with love and fortitude. More than 150 pages are an 'expose' of the affair between JFK and Mary Meyer (a woman I have never heard off before I read this) and a thoroughly nasty sleezey business it was indeed. JFK slipping off for sex with MM again and again, doing drugs with her during the Cuban Missle Crisis, rubbing Jackies nose in it at function after function. A never ending cavalcade of decadance and filth. If it wasn't for the fact that I have studied JFK's life from more than one distorted viewpoint, I could have fallen into the trap of swallowing a load of old rubbish like this!

1 out of 2 people found this review helpful.

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Anonymous

Posted September 6, 2002

Should be: JFK and the Cuban Affairs

The last chapter and the Epilogue where what the whole book should have been like. I wanted to know about Mrs. Kennedy, who she contacted to redecorate the White House, her correspondence with them and her family and friends. What fund raisers did she have to accomplish this, who donated what? What did she do when she went to Glen Ora alone. She was a great gossip and wanted to know everything that was going on. People must have thousands of stories about her that don't contain the name Mary Meyer. If Leaming wants to do a book about M.M., don't call it "Mrs. Kennedy." There was talk she had someone else during that time, surely she could have gotten information if she had really wanted to. This book is totally sterile where Jackie Kennedy is concerned.

1 out of 5 people found this review helpful.

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Anonymous

Posted April 2, 2002

A very good book!

I think this book is a very good book for anyone to read if they enjoy history or the Kennedys. The book portrays her life well. You get a better look at what Jackie's life was like!

1 out of 3 people found this review helpful.

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